So, what happens if.....

reality isn't as utterly amazing and mystically confounding as the theoretical physicists and the New Age gurus would have you believe? What if
it's pretty mundane and redundant, and thoroughly recognizable when revealed in all its simple genius? What if God exists, and isn't omnipotent,
omniscient or omnipresent, but is still directly responsible for why you exist?

What if it all ends up looking way too familiar when the curtain is taken down?

I got one, what if we do have all of what you said, and our physical God that is Mother Earth is REAL but powerless in this realm of darkness? What if
Mother is hoping that the human race will self-enlighten, wake up, and realize what is happening to us as a species, and to our planet.

If all of us truly came from this planet, then I have a hard time believing that ANY of us would EVER ignore The Voice of our Mother Earth, that calls
to us in the night, " Please, save me, God Save The Queen, you My Children, are Kings and Queens!!"

Do we listen to her?
Why can't some of us hear her?
You know what I think?
I think we killed all the ones who gave a Rat's Tale about her.

Yep, we shot all 'dem fruit pickin' hippies to high heaven didn' we Pa?
Now who gon' complain bout us cutting down all deeze trees?

Originally posted by NorEaster
reality isn't as utterly amazing and mystically confounding as the theoretical physicists and the New Age gurus would have you believe? What if
it's pretty mundane and redundant, and thoroughly recognizable when revealed in all its simple genius? What if God exists, and isn't omnipotent,
omniscient or omnipresent, but is still directly responsible for why you exist?

What if it all ends up looking way too familiar when the curtain is taken down?

Will you feel cheated? Will you want your money back?

Relieved, I'd say. That I'm not the result of a God from conventional religion.

Originally posted by NorEaster
reality isn't as utterly amazing and mystically confounding as the theoretical physicists and the New Age gurus would have you believe?

too late. sometimes being skeptical is not longer an option or luxury for some.

What if it's pretty mundane and redundant, and thoroughly recognizable when revealed in all its simple genius? What if God exists, and isn't
omnipotent, omniscient or omnipresent, but is still directly responsible for why you exist?

fine by me. god doesn't need to be all those things all the time.

What if it all ends up looking way too familiar when the curtain is taken down?

Now, familiar and mundane isn't the same as boring. In fact, it might just be that reality is even more impressive because it doesn't rely on magic
or supernatural miracles. Imagine if the questions could all be answered by simply standing back far enough to see the entire pattern for what it is.
Okay, so demons and angels and god-men would suddenly become obsolete, but would that be so terrible if that sort of thing never existed in the first
place anyway?

500 years ago viruses and bacteria were demons. Antibodies were divine intervention. The sun revolved around the Earth, and crop blights happened
because of nasty old women with crooked noses. If you'd tried to alert those folks to how outlandish their explanations were, they would've been in
their legal right to kill you.

That was only 500 years ago, and in the societies that were considered to be the most advanced. Now we know that there were mundane forces at work,
and we shake our heads at those ridiculous people. We've learned that there is redundancy in material structure that makes the cosmos relatable to
the atomic structural levels of physical existence. Not interchangeable, but definitely relatable. And yet, between and beyond the two, we seem to
have a tendency to inject this bandwidth of inconsistency (wormholes, multiverses, consciousness-driven realities, structural collapses at certain
size breakpoints) and maybe we need to address that tendency, since it's the same tendency that they indulged 500 years ago with their curses and
demonic diseases. Theoretical physicists suggest that if a theory explains an anomaly, then that's all it needs to do - but then, demons were
explanations too. They served to explain a lot, and for a very long time.

This forum is about the big questions. I can't imagine a bigger question than the one I posed to start this thread off. What will you do if it
becomes evident that there is a very reasonable explanation for the mysteries of quantum physics, metaphysics and the stuff that keeps folks praying
at the dinner table? What if everyone is right and everyone is wrong, but only concerning bits and pieces of the whole? If presented with the
layout, would you be capable of accepting it? Especially if it wasn't as fantastic or as dramatic as you've been led to believe?

Originally posted by NorEaster
What will you do if it becomes evident that there is a very reasonable explanation for the mysteries of quantum physics, metaphysics and the stuff
that keeps folks praying at the dinner table? What if everyone is right and everyone is wrong, but only concerning bits and pieces of the whole? If
presented with the layout, would you be capable of accepting it? Especially if it wasn't as fantastic or as dramatic as you've been led to
believe?

I suspect that the rabbit hole is deeper than we're able to currently imagine. 500 years from now, people may look back on us, with our limited view
of reality (compared to them,) and find us as bemusing as we find heliocentric thinkers today.

I can't say that bothers me all that much. As a person of faith, one of the things that I believe is that God is neither superficial, nor is he
bothered by our efforts to figure things out. As a result, I don't think that it will all be sorted any time soon, and we'll continue to grow and
learn. But we'll eventually unroot the current problems, and quite likely find more under those.

And I suspect that, when all is said and done, there WILL be very reasonable explanations for quantum physics and other things we don't really
understand right now, because it seems unlikely that there will be unreasonable ones found, or none found. Of course, that statement is couched in a
belief in God, so I consider that to be a reasonable explanation :-)

The whole of reality must be something beyond what we see, feel, value, comprehend. We have watched, time and time again, as people come to the
conclusion that it is not, only to be surprised to find they're not even close to being correct.

When we Manifest 'nothingless' beyond this moment, then I would say we have become very Restful Souls.

But, in the meantime, I am painting a picture of 'here and beyond' in every color I can because life is still unfolding. Every shape, size, and
combination has yet to run out of possibilities within Nature. That's Amazing!

As for our Mother Earth hoping to reach us, through us, so that we can be aware of the Dangers of the Universe, I think there is something more that
has to be recognized first.

Was Earth a Genesis project/planting by another Race out there? It certainly seems to say it in every Religious doctrine. It says it in the stones
too! Totally Awesome! Earth herself may be chained as we are chained; slaves to our keepers!

Wanting to know more is part of the Spiritual Journey. Filled to the brim with every possibility. Even now, before our eyes, it seems to be a very
precarious time for Mankind. That's evidence enough to know it is Incredible by Nature alone.

Nature is more and more an Expression of Intent. Even our own haphazard attempts can be overshadowed by Nature. Seems like a big Message to me LOL.
Time for a Big Change! Time to Break Free!

If God is real...and i believe He is...then i will have a wonderful eternity and a rewarding life...I loved, laughed, did things that i never thought
i would get to do....loved my wife, my family, my mom and dad...and best of all...i get to see them and so many more on the other side. My old body
won't hurt or be sore any more, i won't have the burdens of this world to weigh me down...

If God is not...then...( go back and reread what i just wrote except the part about eternity)

Either way, I am happy with the life i have, have lived, and happy with tommorrow...

I have seen the sun rise on the Atlantic, seen the sun set on the Pacific, seen Hawaii, the Rocky mtns...5000 buffaloe at one time...the rolling
feilds of corn in Nebraska in late summer... seen the blue green waters off the Fla Keys...watch the dew shine on the Blue Ridge in the fall... still
eating my mother's 12 layer homemade chocolate cake... enjoying snuggling with my wife... looking forward to another fall with red and gold leaves
and the smell of fresh apples and wood fires... watch little piglets rooting around the back yard and suddenly realize i am watching, and running back
into their pen like little 5 yr old boys caught eating cookies....

But I feel that many people are filling the void within themselves with any kind of bullschaisse and I feel that they are happily paying the many to
get any exitement to banal and very natural existence.

But that's OK. And furthermore it may be OK to give them this mental drug. It is not stupid who sells, but perhaps the one who buys.

I suppose there's no real downside to believing in a Christian god or in yourself as a tiny bit of god, or whatever your belief is, as long as you
allow for the possibility that your belief system may not be accurate. The bitch is that some of these belief systems require you to ignore all
evidence to the contrary, and my concern has to do with the possibility that if the afterlife is not structured in the way that a person firmly
believes, then the impact of confronting that reality may prove to be overwhelming.

Especially when a person is absolutely prepared to deny the obvious as if it will be a supreme test of their faith, and the last shot for Satan to
grab their soul before God's limo shows up for them. This could become a very crippling situation for that person. The classic "Where's my
cheese" scenario, only there'd be no one to pull that person out of that infinity loop, since it would take that person's rejection of their devout
faith to allow for anyone's assistance to break through. Depending on the nature of eternity (a timeless and forever NOW) such a refusal to allow
the demons of reality to shake one's faith could sentence such a person to a hell of absolute certainty. An eternal void of inability to reconcile
the obvious with their carefully nurtured faith.

This could affect any belief system. Even atheism, since many atheists are as dogmatic as Evangelicals in their rigid faith in the nonexistence of
God or any afterlife of any sort.

I just wonder how flexible the average person who thinks about this sort of thing actually is. I also wonder if anyone has thought about a "Plan B"
in the event of the afterlife being nothing at all what you thought it was. Or worse yet, if the afterlife is a lot more like this side of things
(with entities who have passed, only to remain just as predatory as they were on this side of the divide) and where the other side of the "tunnel"
is a lot more like Los Angeles' Greyhound bus terminal than any of us would like it to be.

Originally posted by soleprobe
The material life forms that are able to contemplate this have a choice:

- conclude that they will utterly perish along with the temporary universe and become as though they never existed

- conclude that there is something permanent they can be part of beyond the temporary universe.

The former conclusion comes to a dead end, utter hopelessness and no reason to be. The latter conclusion offers something the former cannot: hope and
a reason to be

If there is something permanent, then it is guaranteed that billions of people have a huge surprise awaiting them. Regardless of what lies ahead. In
a non-corporeal realm, what power does rigid expectation have in how a transitioned consciousness deals with the significant potential for a very
different environment after the lights go out for it on this side?

I find it funny that people base their faith and theories in assumptions. Many people take given religions as a face value, never really questioning
them properly, but instead looking for evidence to back it up. It is easy to see evidence supporting one's beliefs, but its not that easy to spot
things that are contradictory to them. One day we may finally come into the realization, that earth is not round, but hexagon

Perhaps this illusion prevails because human being is social animal? Perhaps it has to have it's shared symbols and beliefs, it may even be
genetically encoded.

In times immemorial, some fool invented the concept of god with a good intention. Maybe he tried to express something that cannot be symbolized, and
hence made the greatest "sin", he was the first "idolizer" and rest of humanity followed ever since.

Howcome it is that hard to live here and now, without beliefs regarding afterlife? I can be perfectly consent with the possibility that there ain't
anything after death. The eternity in hell isn't problem either (as it may be possible as I don't recognize any religious dogma).

But I have to say, that once we die - or anything dies - the dead go on. How? By biological procesess. We decompose and become something other. What?
I cannot say, I haven't been there yet - and once I am, I'm not coming back to tell you

soleprobe said that there is not hope and no reason to exists if there
isn't faith of afterlife. Well I don't agree. There's lots of reason to be and enjoy the life when it offers its fruits anyone willing to take. In
fact, I don't suscribe either of possibilities soleprobe is suggesting. I see absolutely no reason to think afterlife. Am I somehow retarded? I
don't know.

The few things that really concerns me are:

1) My own spiritual (psychological) / material well being

2) The well being of my immidiate peer groups

3) The well being of rest of the humanity and world in general.

Anyhow, I don't want to talk about myself, but I did it just to demonstrate that it is possible to live happy life without any certainty about
"tomorrow", when we are gone. I am proof of that.

Then again, there's nothing wrong in quiet belief of one's heart. Anyone should be allowed to believe anything as long as it doesn't harm others.
My conceptions about the reality are beliefs as well. The believer would just say "well, thats how you believe it is, but I know how things really
are". Maybe theres afterlife with paradise and hell, but I don't really spend my days concidering that any more than this

Originally posted by NorEaster
I also wonder if anyone has thought about a "Plan B" in the event of the afterlife being nothing at all what you thought it was. Or worse yet, if
the afterlife is a lot more like this side of things (with entities who have passed, only to remain just as predatory as they were on this side of the
divide) and where the other side of the "tunnel" is a lot more like Los Angeles' Greyhound bus terminal than any of us would like it to
be.

I suspect that, if this is the case, those who have proceeded us with help us get through the difficulties of that realization. I have never really
feared death, but what little inkling of it that I had was gone when my wife died. No matter what it is, the person that I loved more than anyone
else in the world has already experienced it, so I am ready.

Lately, I have been dealing with my grief at the brevity of our marriage by considering that, if eternity is what awaits, then what was important was
the fact that we met, fell in love, and began our journey together. Maybe that's an important factor of this life -- getting to know the people who
will be a big part of the next one.

A few weeks back I had a dream in which I met my father (he passed away last year) and I asked him if my ideas about existence are close to the truth.
He answered me "things are not at all as you imagine them to be" and he laughed out loud (in his own sarcastic way, you had to knew him to
understand), then the dream faded.

I had a good chuckle about that when I woke up. There is nothing that the human mind can comprehend that I haven't imagined yet.
So my expectation is that, no matter our beliefs, we are all in for a very big surprise

Originally posted by NorEaster
If there is something permanent, then it is guaranteed that billions of people have a huge surprise awaiting them. Regardless of what lies ahead.

Definitely

Originally posted by NorEaster
In a non- corporeal realm, what power does rigid expectation have in how a transitioned consciousness deals with the significant potential for a very
different environment …?

Expectation would be powerless no matter how rigid. The non-corporeal realm would be entirely different to any “rigid expectation” developed in
the corporeal realm. As you mentioned they would have a “huge surprise awaiting them." Whether that surprise is pleasant or unpleasant is not
solely determined by “rigid expectation”.

I keep in mind the power of cognizant dissonance, and the fact that I believe in our Intellect as being our eternal selves, once the corporeal husk is
shed. When bringing these two together, the potential exists for a belligerently dogmatic Intellect to be trapped in a spiral of delusional faith, or
for such an Intellect to be preyed upon by a "Jesus" that awaits them on the other side of the "tunnel". Kind of like the guy who waits for the
teenage runaway who steps off the bus in downtown LA to get discovered, and "has a spare room and a friend who's in the movie business" that he's
willing to help such a girl out with. "What luck!"

I don't know. Maybe I've been in this world too long to believe that people lose their malevolence as soon as they cross over. In my imagination,
I can just picture all the Jesuses that are standing in line over there, and holding numbers - like at the deli - awaiting their next batch of
Apostles, with all kinds of plans for them and their penance, or spiritual work, or even "eternal torment", depending on the character of the Jesus
in question.

reality isn't as utterly amazing and mystically confounding as the theoretical physicists and the New Age gurus would have you believe? What if it's
pretty mundane and redundant, and thoroughly recognizable when revealed in all its simple genius? What if God exists, and isn't omnipotent,
omniscient or omnipresent, but is still directly responsible for why you exist? What if it all ends up looking way too familiar when the curtain is
taken down? Will you feel cheated? Will you want your money back?

I've seen behind the curtain, seen the secret to all of reality, met the maker you might say ...... let me tell you that its more magical, exiting,
mystical, beyond words awesomeness ....to the zillionth degree of the best thing you can think of.......

.....and yet its all closer to you than your own breathing 99.9999% of people miss it since its more subtle than an insects breath.

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